Latin Americans Are Clamoring for Equality — and Democracy

A sign carried by one of the more than a million Chileans demonstrating on Oct. 25 read: “Neoliberalism was born in Chile; it is dying in Chile.” You’d think the obituary rings true, if you judge not just by protests not just in Chile and Ecuador a few weeks back, but also by election results in Argentina, Bolivia and Mexico. It isn’t the case, but it does point to something real: a new swing to the left in Latin America.

Over the past five years, elections in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador and Peru have swept conservative, free-market, free-trade, neoliberal parties or leaders into office. The “pink tide” that brought leftist leaders democratically to the presidency at the turn of the 21st century is receding, often in shame. One former Brazilian president was jailed, and another was impeached. Fraud and corruption charges were leveled against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina. Peru’s six most recent presidents are either in prison, under investigation for corruption, or dead through suicide.

The socialist leader Evo Morales claimed to have won re-electionlast month in Bolivia for a fourth term, as a result of electoral tampering, and in violation of a constitution he himself drafted and had ratified by referendum. But protests over voter fraud, an international audit of the elections concluding they had been undemocratic, and the Army’s call for his resignation forced him out of office.

The end of the commodity boom, corruption and sheer fatigueejected the left out of power, and the so-called neoliberals stepped in to fill the vacuum. With the exception of Venezuela, Mexico and until yesterday Bolivia, supporters of the Washington Consensus, a set of economic policy recommendations backed by Washington for developing countries, particularly Latin America, reigned supreme.